


at last (i see the light)

by theroyalsavage



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Tangled (2010) Fusion, Fluff, God so much fluff why am i so soft, Gratuitous space metaphors all over the damn place, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 06:56:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11076363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theroyalsavage/pseuds/theroyalsavage
Summary: Of a tower, a missing prince with the sun in his hair and the ability to heal with a touch, and a terrible-dangerous-very-bad bandit who’s never been altogether good at being very bad, dangerous, or terrible.An AU based off of Disney’s Tangled.





	at last (i see the light)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! Just wanted to know there's some allusion to emotional manipulation and abuse in this bad boy (nothing much more graphic than the actual Tangled movie, but maybe with a little more intensity), so be aware of that before you start reading! Take care.

Nico di Angelo grows up with stories of the prince lost to time.

It starts early. One of Nico’s first memories belongs to the prince, to the night of the prince’s disappearance. He remembers his mom, his sister, and a few of the neighbors sitting up late at the kitchen table, gossiping in low voices about the news from the king’s city. Their village is built for farming, miles away from the fever-rush of the capital, but it still feels monumental enough to whisper.

After that night, the prince’s story morphs, becomes something fascinating and impossible and most definitely whisper-worthy.

His mom tells it best, Nico thinks. In his own, humble opinion, of course. With just enough melodrama to make it exciting, and just enough quiet that Nico always knows it’s real. Everyone else tells it loud and brass, like they think if they speak obnoxiously enough, with enough extraneous hand gestures, maybe the prince will hear it.

When Maria tells it, though, the story goes like this, like water flowing downstream: a queen, dying in childbirth, is given medicine drawn from a flower made of the sun. The flower returns strength to her limbs, breathes life back into her lungs, and blesses her son with star-gold hair and the ability to heal with a touch.

Nico’s mom always goes serious at that bit, and asks Nico in a hushed, steady voice: “What do we know about blessings, Nico?”

And he always answers, “They come at a price.”

That’s the secret about blessings. None of them come free.

The first person the little prince heals is his nursemaid, whose half-blind eye goes bright and clear at his touch. After that, the word spreads far, and it spreads fast. The people of the kingdom call the new prince blessed, call him godlike, whisper against his tiny, curving palms that he is destined to save the kingdom, save the people, save the world. They place their hopes on his tiny, delicate shoulders.

And then one morning they wake up and he is gone.

This is where the story deviates, where the whole entire kingdom agrees to disagree. Maria always says she thinks the gods came to reclaim him, that no human was meant to walk with the power of the heavens. Others say he was captured, spirited away in the night by a rival kingdom or bandits or a wicked witch.

(Later, at the orphanage, when Maria and Bianca are gone and Nico is alone, no one says anything about the _after_. It isn’t kids who go missing, here, it is the people that raised them.)

The little prince, made of sunlight, gone without a trace.

A pretty impressive vanishing act, Nico thinks, now, with all these years between them. All things considered, if he had people up in his face all day and all night telling him he was fated for greatness, he’d probably want to split, too. As it is, he only ever gets people up in his face telling him he’s fated for a punch in the throat.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

If there’s one thing Nico di Angelo has learned in the course of his young life, it’s that if you’ve got a special skill set, you shouldn’t waste it.

Unfortunately, Nico’s special skills happen to fall under the category of robbing people blind.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

  

 

 

 

 

Nico is halfway over the city wall, a knife between his teeth and the crown jewels in a satchel cradled to his chest, when it occurs to him that this particular idea may not have been his brightest.

There’s shouting below him, the man operating the castle gate calling for someone to get the _guards_ , for the sake of the _gods_ , but it’s too late - Nico’s already up and over, landing nimbly on the bridge that stretches across the shining river that surrounds the king’s city.

On the other side of the closed gate, the guardsman looks apoplectic. Nico snaps into a sharp salute before swinging himself over the side of the bridge and down into the network of stone columns and arches keeping the bridge aloft.

Above and behind him, the city’s warning bell starts to ring.

“ _That’s_  more like it,” Nico mumbles around the dagger in his mouth. He darts along the underbelly of the bridge, leaping from beam to beam. When he reaches the end, he jumps off and lands soft on the sand, pausing on the beach for less than a second before moving inland, veering away from the road and into the trees. Once he gets deeper into the forest, he’ll have the upper hand - he knows the woods, the city’s soldiers do not. The problem is, he can already hear hoofbeats behind him as the king’s cavalry start to make chase.

Nico reaches into his satchel, touches the cold metal of the kingdom’s most precious treasure, and then takes off at a run.

It’s not like this was a particularly _difficult_  heist to pull off. The kingdom’s Finest, Hand-Picked Swordsmen are, frankly, improbably stupid and slow. And Nico’s made a name for himself in the business for being elusive - in one second and out the other, with no one the wiser. Like a ghost. Like a shadow.

Well, now they’ll have to call him the ghost _king_ , won’t they, Nico thinks, with something like hysteria. And then he almost kills himself tripping over a tree root.

He would’ve made it in and out unnoticed. He _could’ve_. The problem was never the job itself. The _problem_ , it transpired, was the wanted poster with his own face splashed loud and brass in the middle, which he found glaring directly at him as he tried to exit through the city’s main gate.

“Huh,” Nico’d said, squinting at the reward listed under his name. “What d’you know? They messed up my nose.”

“What’s that in the bag?” the guardsman had asked him, already pulling out his sword.

“Great question,” Nico had responded. And that’s when he’d started scaling the wall.

And so now here he is, dodging trees and shrubbery, holding a leather purse stuffed with a crown worth more money than Nico will probably ever touch in his sorry goddamn _life_ , all the king’s horses and all the king’s men on his tail.

“Fuck,” Nico mutters as he runs. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”

Hoofbeats. Closer this time, definitely. And a voice, clearly shouting, “Split off! Cut him off from the right.”

Fuck fuckfuckfuck _fuck_.

There’s a dense patch of trees up ahead, along with a craggy cliff draped in moss leading up to a higher plane. Nico scans the face of the cliff - the moss might make things slippery, but there’s enough handholds in the stone that he should be fine to scale it. And that way, the cavalrymen on his tail won’t be able to follow. It’s a gamble, but a smart one.

There’s another shout from behind him, and then the echoing bark of several hunting dogs to join the steady drum of horses fast approaching.

He picks up the pace.

Nico reaches into his bag as he runs and rips two strips of cloth out, looping them quick around his hands and tying with his teeth to keep his palms from getting cut up if there’s anything sharp on the cliff-face he can’t see through the moss. He reaches the dense patch of forest, catches sight of his pursuers between the trees, launches himself at the cliff-

And passes right through it.

Nico stumbles and almost falls. There is no actual cliff-face behind the moss - instead, he’s passed through it like a curtain, into a short tunnel, which opens into a massive, grassy clearing.

Nico blinks. Opens and closes his hands.

Looks behind him.

No one bursts through the curtain of moss. No one sticks him with a broadsword. Instead, he can hear the sounds of the soldiers getting fainter and fainter in the distance.

The clearing is nestled between cliffs, sheer and rocky and blooming bright with flowers and twisting, curling vines. There’s a waterfall in a far corner, a stream leading down and away. Birdsong, sunbeams slanting and yellow and sparkling, the works. Like something out of a fairy tale.

But Nico’s a little preoccupied with the giant fucking _tower_  tucked away between the trees.

It’s narrow, spindly, stretching upwards between the cliffs like a finger. There’s no entrance on the ground level, but there _is_  an open window up along the tower’s crown, maybe fifty feet above him.

“I’ll take it,” Nico says, in the general direction of whatever gods are keeping an eye on him today. The god of thieves, probably. If he wasn’t before, Nico’s almost definitely his favorite by now.

He approaches the tower cautiously, on the lookout for anything that might resemble a trap, scanning the clearing as he moves. It’s quiet, serene, only the sound of water humming low breaking up the whisper of the breeze. There doesn’t look to be any easy entrances and exits to the meadow aside from the one he came through.

The tower’s face is smooth, sheer, like it’s been designed to be unclimbable, but Nico isn’t infamous for nothing. He adjusts the makeshift gloves on his hands and starts to hoist himself upwards, quick and no-nonsense, his movements fluid and refined. The tower’s a bit of a challenge, even for him, his handhold slipping once or twice, but he reaches the top eventually, swinging himself up and over the windowsill and into the room inside in one smooth motion.

“Mother?” a voice asks, and Nico answers, automatically, “Um, _no_?” and then there’s a sharp scream.

Nico turns fast enough to catch a glimpse of blinding sunlight before something hits him _hard_ on the head and the world goes dark.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s been knocked out enough times to know that this one’s gonna leave a mark.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

What feels like seconds - or maybe years - later, Nico comes to sudden and abrupt, with an ache in his head and in his hands. He groans, blinks the fog from his vision, and begins to realize just how fucked he really is when he spots the rope twisted amateurishly around his wrists.

He yelps before he can help it, scooting backward fast enough that the chair he’s tied to topples over backwards. There’s a soft little squeak from somewhere above him, some frantic rustling and furious motion, and then he’s being righted, and finds himself staring down the end of a...

Frying pan?

Nico whispers, going a little cross-eyed to keep the frying pan in his field of vision, “What the _fuck_  is happening right now?”

“Don’t move!” a vaguely familiar voice says, from somewhere behind the frying pan, and Nico lets out an unsteady bark of laughter.

“How the fuck am I supposed to _move_ , buddy? You tied me to a chair!”

“You invaded my tower!”

“You knocked me out with a frying pan!”

“I panicked!”

Nico shakes his head again, a twist of wooziness coming and going in his stomach before the spinning in his vision finally stills. He’s in some kind of round room, like in a castle turret, all cobbled walls and arching windows. It looks _homey_ , welcoming, draped in curtains and covered in books and art supplies, with thousands of pictures painted onto the walls. The sunset, a dragon, the stars.

“Wait, hang on, do you _live_  in here?” Nico asks, and then he turns, and meets the eyes of the boy behind the frying pan.

“Yes,” the boy says, defensive. “Wait. No. I mean. No. Shit.”

Nico lets himself look. The boy is sun-colored, star-colored, with a shock of golden hair, tall and freckled and tan. He’s got wide, wide blue eyes, his lips curving and pink and set into a thin, furious line, and he’s wearing simple clothes - soft-looking pants, an overlarge tunic that’s slipping to one side, exposing the long, slender line of his collarbone.

His fingers are marble-smooth and graceful, seamless where Nico’s are knobby and scarred and cobbled together. There’s paint smudged on his thumb, ink on the heel of his hand. They’re shaking, almost imperceptibly, where they’re holding the handle of frying pan. Nico looks up, meets the boy’s eyes again.

They are every color blue Nico has a name for, and then some.

They are also _terrified_.

Nico doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone look at him like he’s worth being frightened of.

“Okay,” Nico says, shifting his hands just a tad, looking for a weakness in the rope. The knots give a little under the movement. “Okay. Look. Buddy. I’m not going to hurt you, okay? I just needed a place to hide. You untie me, and I’ll get out of here.”

“Don’t lie,” the boy hisses, his voice trembling so slightly most people wouldn’t have noticed. “I _know_  what you’re here for.”

“Clearly,” Nico says, voice dry, “you do not.”

“Mother warned me about people like you,” the boy says, tremulous, still putting in a valiant effort to look furious rather than fearful.

Nico says, “ _Ah_.” Classic case of overprotective parenting, then. Well, maybe not _classic_ , Nico amends to himself, casting another look around at the tower, which does not appear to have any doors from inside, either. This particular method is a bit unorthodox in Nico’s experience, to say the least.

Okay. New tactic, then.

“Well, in that case, you’d better let me go before your mom gets back, huh?” Nico says, tilting his head and shooting the boy his best sympathetic smile. “I’m sure she wouldn’t much like to walk in on you all mussed up, keeping a handsome man tied to a chair, huh?”

The boy looks blank. Nico slams his head against a wall inwardly.

“Listen. Buddy-”

“I’ve got a name,” the boy blurts angrily.

“Yeah?”

Nico lifts an eyebrow. The boy flushes a bit, like he wasn’t planning on saying anything about having a name and now he’d accidentally exposed himself as a name-haver. “It’s Will,” he says, reluctantly.

 _Cute_ , Nico thinks, a little exasperated.

“Okay, _Will_ , lovely to meet you. My name’s Nico, it’s a pleasure, et cetera, et cetera.”

Will looks unimpressed. Nico sighs.

“Listen, Will. I swear to you, I really, truly don’t mean you any harm. You let me up, keep that frying pan on me in case I try anything funny, and I’ll grab my bag and get out. You’re safe, your mom’s happy, your tower is once again impregnable.”

Will’s nervous expression has begun to soften, confusion beginning to replace fear in his eyes. Nico opens his hands.

“I promise,” he says, sincerely, and Will finally lets the frying pan drop to his side.

“All right then,” Nico says, surprised, but Will’s already untying his hands. He works quick, deft, and for some reason his touch makes shivers race up Nico’s skin. The ache in his head dulls, the rope burn around his wrists eases. Will’s fingertips brush for a split second against the inside of Nico’s wrist, and it makes Nico’s heartbeat stutter and still.

“Sorry,” Will says, his ears extremely pink. “I really didn’t mean to hit you that hard.”

“I’ve had worse,” Nico says, holding one of his wrists and testing out his range of motion. Now that he’s deemed him not a threat, Will’s body language has opened up, the tension in his shoulders releasing, his expression going from tightly angry to curious.

“What was after you, though?” he asks, stepping back as Nico stands, shakes out his feet, rolls his neck. “Mother says there are monsters out there - gangs of bandits - were you being chased by something like that?”

“No monsters,” Nico says. “More like guards. I’ve got some... angry acquaintances. Speaking of which, where’s my bag?”

Will blinks.

Nico takes another look around the room. No bag.

“Will,” he says, his voice silky-dangerous this time. “Where’s my bag?”

“I hid it,” Will says, his frying pan-free hand curling into a fist at his side. He’s starting to look skittish again, though he’s actually doing an excellent job of keeping his face stony and stern.

Nico tries valiantly to school his own expression so that he doesn’t look murderous.

“You hid it,” he echoes. “ _Why_?”

“I need a favor from you,” Will says, and then he’s moving, swinging himself gracefully up and onto the desk so that he can pull a tapestry away from the small drawing of stars Nico noticed earlier. Only it’s _not_ a small drawing - with the tapestry pushed aside, Nico can see that the painting stretches from ceiling to floor, yellow-orange-gold fairylights against a richly purply, velvet sky.

Not stars, either, Nico realizes. “The lantern festival? The one for the lost prince?” Nico asks, and Will nods enthusiastically.

“It happens every year on my birthday,” he explains. “I see the lights from my window, and every year I feel... I don’t know. _Something_. Like they’re trying to tell me something. Like they’re calling to me.”

“O- _kay,”_ Nico says.

“I want you to take me to them,” Will says.

 _No_ -kay, Nico’s mind responds, immediately, though luckily he catches up to his thoughts in time to slam his mouth shut and keep from saying it out loud.

“I can’t go back to the king’s city,” Nico points out flatly. “Literally, no can do. I don’t know if you’ll recall this, but I climbed up your tower because I was running for my _life_.”

“You can wear a hood,” Will says, and Nico makes a little strangled sound of protest, but Will shakes his head and plows on.

“I’ve spent my whole life up in this tower,” he continues, a crease between his eyebrows, a wrinkle on his freckled nose, and _gods_ , Nico has really gotten himself into something _way_  above his pay grade here. “I know by now that I’m not... I’m not meant to see the world, and that’s okay, it really is. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life _wondering_. I don’t think I can.”

And then he looks up, looks at Nico with those bright, sky-colored eyes. “You take me to the lights and back safe, and I’ll give you your bag.”

And Nico tries to be angry.

He really, really does.

But instead he looks at this boy, fierce and frightened and improbable and the same wrought-gold as the crown he’d stolen, this boy who has managed to get the jump on him _twice_  where half the king’s horses and half the king’s men have failed over and over and over. He looks at him, and instead of being angry, he feels something bizarrely like _pride_.

Nico laughs, once. And then he says, “All right, then, pretty boy. The lights and back it is. If you get my ass arrested, though, I’ll definitely never forgive you.”

And Will’s face lights up, brighter than the lanterns, brighter than anything Nico has ever seen, and he pumps a fist and jumps into the air, and, oh, _oh_.

Nico is so, so screwed.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

They rig up a rope ladder for Will to use to climb down the side of the tower. Nico double-ties the ends to Will’s bedposts, since his bed is fixed in place, and puts his weight on the contraption first to show Will it’s safe. Will stares at him, wide-eyed, for less than a second before grabbing the rope, hauling himself over the windowsill, and beginning to inch his way down.

Nico scales the side of the tower the way he did climbing up, maybe to show off a little, maybe because he’s feeling - understandably, he thinks - a bit bitter regarding ropes lately, but by the time he gets to the ground, Will’s too busy sprinting in circles around the field to pay much attention. That first hour and a half, Nico watches Will oscillate between unbridled joy - he reacts to everything, to wind and water and grass and ground, like a blind man seeing color for the first time - and unspeakable, gut-wrenching guilt.

“She’ll hate me forever,” Will whispers, tangling his fingers in the hem of his shirt. “She’ll really never forgive me for this.”

“We can go back,” Nico offers dryly, but Will looks even more frantic at that prospect.

“No, I - I need to do this. For me. But, I just...”

He looks back at the tower, then down at his feet, like he can’t quite believe what they look like against grass instead of stone.

“She’ll never forgive me,” he repeats, hushed, and Nico tries very, very hard not to ask Will where, exactly, his mother is so he can punch her right in the mouth.

He lets Will waver for as long as his patience will let him. And then he places his hands on his hips and announces, “Okay, decision time, pretty boy. In or out?”

Will looks up at him for a long moment before saying, “Let’s go.”

When they finally leave the clearing, Will’s mood moves from reluctant excitement to fear. He’s jumpy, on edge, dropping into a rudimentary defensive stance at the slightest rustle of the bushes. Nico almost corrects his technique a couple times before telling himself it’s pointless anyway. Instead, he claps Will on the shoulder and cheerfully offers to take him right back home every time he’s jump-scared by a rabbit.

To be honest, Nico doesn’t really blame him, though. For the jumpiness, for the confused emotions, for the fear.

He knows what it’s like to spend a childhood ducking.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

The thing about Will, Nico begins to realize, as they wind their way through the woods, back in the direction of king’s city, is that he is an incredibly difficult person not to like.

As a last-ditch attempt to get Will back to the tower and the crown back into his hands, Nico takes Will to a seedy old pub called _Half-Blood_. The regulars there aren’t _cruel,_ per-say, but they do tend to take poorly to strangers, and Nico knows for a fact that nearly everyone in there knows how to kill a man at least six different ways. Will’s still nervous enough, Nico thinks, that a glare from Clarisse La Rue should be enough to send him back to his tower for the rest of his life.

And then they walk in, the pub goes silent, and within five minutes, Will’s got the whole place under his thumb.

Nico sits on top of the bar, nursing a half-empty glass of cider, and listens as Will tells this entire room of hardened criminals that he’s dreamt his whole life of seeing the lights up close, that Nico’s taking him there, that he’s never in all his years of living felt so _alive_.

“Cute kid,” Leo, the bartender, drawls at Nico’s side. “You won’t last a day, di Angelo.”

“Suck my toe, Valdez,” Nico responds, automatic, but Will’s beaming now as Grover Underwood talks fondly about his own dream, and he can’t help but think Leo may be a little bit right.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

They’re sitting at a table in the back of the pub, watching as Clarisse soundly crushes a man twice her size at arm wrestling, when the door opens again. This time, it isn’t a patron who walks through, though, but two soldiers wearing the king’s colors.

Nico spots them immediately. He must react visibly, because Will turns toward the door so fast his neck must hurt.

“They found me,” Nico and Will say at the same time, and then they whip around to look at each other and demand, “They found _you_?”

“ _Wanted_ , remember?” Nico says, frantically searching the table for something he can use as a weapon. His fork? A little messy, but...

“My mother told me the kingdom’s been after me since I was born,” Will’s mumbling, wringing his hands in his lap hard enough to wear them raw. “They want to... to _use_ me - Nico, I have to-”

Nico puts his hand down over Will’s. Will goes still.

“Okay,” Nico says. His eyes catch Leo's, and Leo nods them over. They slip through a tunnel under the pub while Will’s new friends keep the soldiers distracted. Nico’s about to close the door behind them when one shouts, “ _There he is_!” and points directly at him.

“ _Time to go_!” Nico screams, and he takes off sprinting, Will in tow.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

The good news is that the soldiers do not follow them down the tunnel, which gives Nico time to get his bearings and catch his breath. The bad news is that they’re waiting for them when they pop out the other side.

“Fuck,” Nico mutters, reaching up to rub the headache out of his temples.

One of the soldiers tosses a pile of papers Nico’s feet. Nico glances at them and determines that they are, in fact, wanted posters with his own face on them. Additionally, they have yet to get his nose right.

“So this is the famous phantom of king’s city,” one of the soldiers says, spinning his sword in his hand in a way that’s probably meant to be intimidating. “You don’t look like much, boy.”

Nico puts one hand on his hip and shrugs. “It’s part of my charm.”

“Hilarious.” The guards take a step forward. Nico slips forward so that Will is behind him, reaching a hand out to gently push Will back.

“You’ve been a thorn in this kingdom’s side for long enough, di Angelo.”

“Thanks,” Nico says. “It’s nice to have your skills validated.”

The soldiers unsheathe their swords. Nico takes another step forward. 

The soldiers stare.

“Give it up, boy,” one of them says, in a tone of great bewilderment. “You’ve got nowhere to _go_.”

“Hmm,” Nico says. And then he moves.

Nico fights like he lives; quiet, quick, under the radar. Nico fights in a way that criminals hate and that soldiers hate even more, adaptable and cautious and smart. He’s good at playing off his opponent’s weaknesses, good at shifting from one style to another, good at learning from small mistakes and not making them again.

One of the soldiers nicks him in the side. In his next motion, Nico’s got him disarmed. Two more movements, the other guy’s sword is in Nico’s hands, and he may be bleeding a bit from his side, but this battle’s won.

There’s a shout from a little ways away, and then one of Nico’s opponents yells, “ _We’re over here, sir!”_

Nico turns to Will, who’s looking pale and queasy and rather shell-shocked, and says, “Time to go again.”

He snags the pile of wanted posters before they leave, out of spite.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

They run.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

It isn’t until the forest around them is silent again, nothing but trees and the whisper of wind, that Nico allows them to finally slow and stop. As they pull up to a halt, Nico realizes that his shirt’s soaked through with blood, the wound in his side is smarting more than he’d thought at first, and Will’s breathing hard enough that it sounds like it hurts.

“Sorry,” Nico says, when he regains his breath. “I didn’t even think to consider that they might look for me there. Rookie mistake.”

“It’s fine,” Will pants, and he looks up from where he’s doubled-over, hands on his knees, to offer Nico a sudden, disarming smile. “I liked your friends, though. Back at the bar.”

“They’re not my friends,” Nico’s mumbling, but Will’s eyes are on his side.

“You’re hurt,” he says. “Shit. Nico. You’re _super_  hurt.”

“I’m fine,” Nico says, waving him off, but then he tries to take a step and the world spins around him, and oh, yeah, no. Not fine. Far from fine, actually.

He sits down hard and Will runs to his side, catching him with a hand on the nape of his neck before his head can hit a tree. He sees rather than feels Will rip the shirt away from his stomach, exposing the knife wound. Nico knows the problem is blood loss, that the wound’s not deep enough to have damaged anything vital, and he’s about to say so when Will opens his mouth and says, “Your problem is blood loss. The wound’s not deep enough to damage anything vital.”

“Oh,” Nico says, eloquently.

Will’s hands are steady on his stomach, his expression serious but calm. He looks at Nico for one long moment, something searching in his eyes, before he says, “I’m gonna do something. Don’t freak out.”

“What are you going to-”

“Shhh.”

Will hesitates for another moment, eyes narrow and thoughtful, before beginning to hum something, quiet and lilting, under his breath. And then a glow spreads through his hair, turning it to sunlight, sparkling and blinding, and his hand is _burning_  on Nico’s stomach, fingertips light against Nico’s skin.

Nico’s insides turn effervescent and he watches in shock and awe as the wound knits itself back together, until he’s left with just his skin, smooth and unblemished.

Will’s fingertips trail feather-light along his ribcage for a split-second before he pulls away and leans back to sit on his heels, the tips of his ears flushed pink.

“That’s. Um. Why I thought they were after me.”

“Oh,” Nico squeaks. “I see.”

Will looks down for a long moment, something like fear and frustration warring on his face, before he looks up, meets Nico’s eyes. Smiles.

“You’re unbelievable at fighting,” he says. “Like, really, really good.”

Nico taps a hand against his stomach. “Not _that_ good,” he says, with a roll of his eyes, but Will shakes his head.

“I have never seen anything like you before,” he says, hushed, and before Nico can think too much into that, he gives a crooked little grin and says, “You know, I think you may be one of those bad men my mother always warned me about.”

They’re up and on their feet, beginning to pick their way through the woods again, before Nico responds.

“I think,” Nico says, slowly, “that my mom may have told me about you, too.”

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because of the fiasco and the flight from _Half-Blood_ , they’re a little bit further from the capitol city when night falls than Nico was hoping they would be. It’s probably a two or three-day walk from here, depending on how fast they can move, so he suggests they get some sleep and start early in the morning. He makes camp while Will gathers firewood and then proves himself to be surprisingly adept at making bonfires.

It’s full dark by the time they settle around the campfire. They sit close enough that Nico’s body is hyper-aware of Will’s, enough to feel but not to touch. They’re picking at some food Will brought from his tower, Nico furiously jabbing a stick at the pile of wanted posters as they smolder in the fire, when Will asks, “What did you steal?”

Nico looks at him, at his eyes, bruise-colored in the semi-darkness. At the way he’s folded himself up, the way he sits with his chin perched neatly on his knees. At his freckles like starstuff, the shadow of a dimple in his cheek, the way his bangs are almost, almost curls.

“Whatever’s in that bag is stolen, yeah?” Will elaborates. “What is it?”

Nico says, “Something that didn’t belong to them to begin with.”

Will looks at him. It feels a bit like drowning.

“I stole the lost prince’s crown,” Nico eventually grumbles, giving the ashes of the wanted posters a particularly vengeful stab.

Will’s eyebrows shoot up. “No wonder the king hates you.”

“Despises, I think. ‘The king despises you,’ would be a little more accurate.”

Will huffs a laugh. “Why would you steal the crown? Do you have a death wish, or something?”

Nico lifts an eyebrow and rubs his thumb against his fingertips. Will shakes his head.

“Just for money? Seriously?”

And Nico’s nonchalant answer is on his lips, sarcastic and quick and ready-prepared, but it dies in his mouth, and instead he finds himself saying, “I grew up with nothing.”

Will goes still. Nico’s brain screams at him to _stop, shut up, stop,_ stop.

“My mom died of disease when I was young,” he continues. “In my village, money didn’t matter. In the city, though, where they took me when she was gone? Money is everything. You’re more human if you’re rich. If you’re poor, you’re less than nothing.”

He shrugs. “I wanted to make myself into someone who never had to suffer again. I took the crown for the money, but I maybe also took it to prove I could.”

Will’s just looking at him, quiet and serious and Nico feels the burn of his eyes on his skin like a physical touch.

“That seems like a lot to go through for pride,” he finally says, and Nico’s mouth curves into a smile despite himself.

“People tend to underestimate me. It’s kind of annoying.”

“I don’t see how they could, you’re terrifying,” Will says, but he’s smiling too, and Nico feels lighter, somehow. Like he’s eased some of his own burden off just by opening up to Will.

Nico rolls his eyes. “Cheers. I _am_ kind of short, though.”

“That’s true,” Will says, and he’s full-on beaming now, dimpled and bright like the moon. “You’re pretty tiny.”

“Excuse me, that’s the part where you’re supposed to reassure me that I’m manly and intimidating.”

Will snorts. Nico tosses a pebble at him.

They sit in silence for awhile, Nico nursing the fire until it’s more of a steady flame, Will watching him with his face propped on his knees.

“You’re not going to freak out?”

“About?”

Will gestures at him vaguely, color returning bright in his cheeks. “Earlier... your side...”

Nico considers it, reaches up to rest his hand against the spot where he’d been bleeding out less than half a day ago. “I’ve seen stranger things,” he decides, and a breath goes out of Will, tension releasing in his limbs that Nico hadn’t even realized had been there.

“It felt good,” he whispers. “To show you.”

Same, Nico wants to say. Instead, he says, “You might be the lost prince, Will.”

Will looks miserable. “Yes. I might.”

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Nico wakes up the next morning, Will is close enough to touch. His eyes are closed, eyelashes fanned feather-light against the graceful slope of his cheekbones, lips parted slightly as he breathes. One of his hands is curled in Nico’s shirt, warm against Nico’s stomach.

Nico closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rest of their journey is not: exciting, disastrous, violent, frightening.

What it _is_ , though, is monumentally, unspeakably important to Nico. Formative, in the way that only the most mundane, everyday things can be.

(Will’s knuckles brush against Nico’s when they walk. It feels like flying.)

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the time they reach the capitol, the lantern festival is already in full swing. The city is a thousand different colors, lined with flowers the shades of a sunset, the streets packed with visitors and vendors and performers alike. The warm smell of baking dough fills the air, mixed with the perfume of flowers and the fire-bright smell of lanterns already lit.

Will runs through the streets with his lips parted, eyes moving a mile a minute, tugging Nico from booth to booth at top speed. Neither of them have money, but nobody seems to mind, today; people greet them and clasp their hands, a little boy with a flute plays them a song and looks delighted when Will bursts into applause, a baker hands them a fresh roll apiece, flaky and buttery and warm enough to melt in their mouths.

People take to Will like moths to flame. He is dazzling, beautiful, allowing himself to be guided from place to place with grace and ease. He’s drawing with rose-colored chalk on the pavement with a couple little girls, Nico watching off to the side, when an old woman gently touches Nico’s arm.

“For your lover,” she says, and passes him a flower with petals the richest purple Nico’s ever seen.

Nico feels his face flush and tries to protest, to hand the flower back to her, but she laughs and shakes her head.

“You look at him like he holds the secrets of the universe, young man.”

And then she is gone, swept up by the crowd, and Will is jogging up to him breathlessly, fingers smudged with color like they were back in the tower, when the two of them first met.

“Whatcha got there?” Will asks, a laugh in his voice, and Nico reaches over and tucks the flower behind Will’s ear before he can think better of it. Will goes still for a moment, and then his face lights up.

He wears it proud. Like a crown. He looks startling, radiant. The most beautiful thing Nico’s ever seen.

Nico’s chest aches with a want he doesn’t have a name for.

The crowd only grows in size and excitement as the day wears on, the chatter of voices giving way to the sound of music, bright and piping and optimistic.

They get swept up in the dancing, Will enthusiastic, Nico reluctant. But the music is good and the night is warm, the sun beginning to set, the sky turning pink and pearlescent above their heads, so he lets himself be drawn by the current, in and out, ebbing like a tide.

One, two, three.

And then the crowd twists, and Nico is flung from one partner to the next, and he finds himself staring into familiar noon-colored eyes, Will’s palm against his, Will’s hand on his waist.

“Hi,” Will says, and then he laughs, his head thrown back, and Nico tries not to stare at the line of his throat, the curve of his mouth, the way his hair turns to fire in the dying light.

They’re close enough for their noses to brush, close enough that Nico can feel Will’s breath soft on his mouth, and there’s a moment of breathless _something_ , of everything in the universe going quiet and still. And then someone shouts, “It’s starting!” and Nico rips himself away, stepping back and shoving his hands in his pockets and nodding towards the waterfront.

“Let’s go, then,” he says, and Will blinks.

“Where?”

“If you’re gonna see these goddamn lights,” Nico says, and he thinks his voice sounds different than usual, altered, shifted, “then you’re gonna see them from the best goddamn seat in the house.”

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out on the boat, instead of watching the lanterns, Nico watches Will.

The water is still as glass, and the lanterns above reflect, refract, become stars below. Will takes it all in - the universe around them, the endless expanse of the cosmos on every side - breathless and beautiful, and the world spins and spins and spins.

“Thank you, Nico. For everything,” Will whispers, when the last of the lanterns are disappearing into the sky, and Nico kisses him. He places his hand flat on Will’s cheek, opens his mouth against Will’s lips, and it is everything, everything.

It feels like coming home.

And in the end, after everything, there is this:

Nico’s lips on Will’s, Will’s hands in Nico’s hair, the stars spinning around them, a hundred thousand at a time.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is dawn when Nico and Will untangle themselves, Will’s lips lingering on Nico’s shoulder, Nico’s fingers lingering on Will’s face. Nico rows the boat back over to the beach, on the far side of the river. They sit and watch the lights of the kingdom flicker on, the sky slowly bleeding from gray to pinkish-gold.

Behind them, a voice gasps, heavy with drama, “ _William_.”

Will goes completely still, his face filling with a fear unlike anything Nico’s seen on him this whole time. He scrambles to his feet, the boat sliding a little on the sand of the beach as he stumbles out and onto land. Nico gets up slower, unwinding himself cautiously as he appraises this new threat.

Will’s mother isn’t really what Nico was picturing. She’s _old_ , for one thing, withered and gnarled and furious-looking. She’s also holding a jagged, nasty-looking knife in her hand, which isn’t really something Nico associates with old ladies, in general.

“Will,” she says, taking a step forward and holding her free hand out, “what on _earth_ are you doing?”

Nico tries to step between them, but Will catches his hand before he can and shakes his head. Will’s mother’s face contorts, and she looks at the place where Will is touching Nico like it’s blasphemous, disgusting, an affront to the gods.

“Will, sweetie,” she says, in a voice sickly sweet enough to turn Nico’s stomach, “you poor, _poor_  thing. Don’t touch him, honey. I’ll take you home now, don’t worry, I won’t let this _bandit_  hurt you anymore-”

“I’m not a child,” Will says, sharp and loud, and this woman who is _not_ Will’s mother recoils, her mouth twisting into a feral snarl. “And you’ve lied to me my _entire_  life.”

“Will, sweetheart, whatever this boy told you-”

Will draws himself up, tall and proud, and Nico’s chest fills with warm pride. 

“I’m the lost prince.”

Silence.

“Will,” the old woman says, slowly, like she exercising the patience of a saint, “that’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Will shakes his head violently. “It’s _true_. I can heal with a touch. That’s why you’ve kept me around - to keep you young and beautiful-”

She recoils. “How dare you repay my generosity like this, William? After I fed you, clothed you, put a _roof_  over your head. You ungrateful little cretin, where would you be without me?”

“You took me away from my parents,” Will says. “And I’m done wasting my life away waiting for you to love me.”

It happens faster than Nico’s eyes can track. Will hums a soft note, long and low, and then bursts into a sudden, violent light, his hair and eyes burning like sunlight. The old woman screeches, writhes, and begins to smoke, flake away. Ashes to ashes.

In the seconds before she catches fire, she throws the knife in her hand.

Nico steps before he can think better of it.

He sees rather than feels when the knife buries itself in his chest.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Darkness.

Silence.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nico comes to for just a moment, sand in his mouth, eyes dry, throat convulsing. There’s something wet on his face.

Will sits over him, singing softly, tears streaming down his cheeks. His hair does not glow. The sky is the palest shade of yellow imaginable above their heads.

Nico reaches up with a shaking hand. Brushes Will’s hair out of his eyes.

“Love you,” he says, before the world goes dark.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moonlight, sunlight, starlight.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

He comes to slowly this time, like the sun parting through the clouds. He’s in a bed, softer than any bed he’s ever slept in his entire life. The ceiling above him is gilded marble, lined with beautiful art and arching windows. He’s achy and disoriented and his head’s kind of swimming, but his chest doesn’t hurt. He reaches up with a shaking hand and touches the place where the dagger had been.

Next to him, there’s a soft, stuttering breath, and Nico turns to see Will asleep, curled up small in an armchair next to his bed. He shifts in his sleep, his face drawn and worried, paler than Nico’s ever seen him.

Nico sits up. Will’s eyes fly open.

“Hello,” Nico rasps.

Will’s on top of him before he can say anything, face cradled between his hands, peppering kisses on his cheeks, his eyelids, his nose, his ears. Nico laughs a little weakly and tries to swat him away, and they’re both crying, Nico thinks.

“I love you too,” Will whispers, the words pressed against the junction between Nico’s jaw and his throat. “I love you.”

“Your highness!” someone shouts, from above them, scandalized. “Get off the patient, please!”

“Your highness,” Nico laughs, tracing shapes onto Will’s back with his fingers, and Will beams. “Who might that be?”

“You know that lost prince? I hear he’s been found,” he says, and then he leans in again. It takes two nursemaids to coax him back into his chair.

Nico doesn’t think he minds.

**Author's Note:**

> s/o to Halsey's new album for basically writing this for me


End file.
